Don Peden
Director, Ethiopia
International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)
PO Box 5689, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
46215, ext 181 & E-mail:(d.peden@cgiar.org)
Your Excellency, Minister of Water Resources, Ato. Shiferaw Jarsso,
Your Excellency, Vice Minister of Water Resources, Ato. Mesfin Tegegne,
Colleagues from the Government and
the universities of Ethiopia, the Global Mechanism of the CCD, The United
Nations Country Team, Embassies, NGOs, IWMI and ILRI, visitors and guests.
Dear Friends:
It is a great pleasure to welcome each and every one of you to ILRI, the International Livestock Research Institute, and to this opening session of the Workshop on integrated water and land management: Research and Capacity Building Priorities for Ethiopia. We are delighted and honoured to host this event on ILRI’s Addis Ababa campus in collaboration with the Ethiopian Ministry of Water Resources, the Ethiopian Agricultural Research Organization, the Ministry of Agriculture and the International Water Management Institute. We are particularly happy to have so many participants from partner organizations across the country and from abroad.You are very welcome!
There is a family of 16 international agricultural research centres that work with many partners to improve agriculture and natural resource management around the globe. These are known as Future Harvest Centres. For those of you who can access the web, you will find more information about the Future Harvest Centres at WWW.FUTUREHARVEST.ORG. ILRI and the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) are part of Future Harvest. Shortly, you will also learn more about IWMI and Future Harvest’s priorities for research and management of water resources.
ILRI was established in 1995 through the merger of the International Livestock Centre for Africa or ILCA (a well known institute in Ethiopia) and the International Laboratory for Research on Animal Diseases that was located in Kenya. What Ethiopians used to know as ILCA is now ILRI. In collaboration with many partners, ILRI conducts livestock related research in Asia, Africa and Latin America and it maintains close ties to many advanced research institutions in the more industrialized countries. It seeks to strengthen ties to NGOs and civil society whenever and wherever appropriate.
Reducing poverty a goal that we all share in common. As it’s goal, ILRI and its partners intend to reduce poverty and make sustainable development possible for livestock keepers, their families and the communities in which they live. It can become the unifying principle that drives future collaboration amongst all of us. Our vision is a world made better for the poor people in developing countries by improving agricultural systems in which livestock are important and or could become so. Evidence shows that in Ethiopia, livestock production play an important role in bringing people out of poverty. We believe that well managed domestic animals can make agricultural systems in this country more productive and more sustainable. However, livestock production is not possible without adequate quality water. When people mismanage livestock, degradation of already scarce water resources often follows. Thus, ILRI is committed to working with you to help improve the lives of the poor through integrated water and livestock management.
This is an exciting day because this workshop will enable us to learn more about you and the organizations that you represent. It will allow us to merge our comparative and collaborative advantages to better enable us to collectively bring great benefit to the millions of poor in Ethiopia and to contribute to the conservation of Ethiopia’s natural resources, a country of unique inherent value and importance. Improving water, watershed and river basin management are vital to poverty reduction. The knowledge gained in Ethiopia will benefit the world.
For example, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, specified in the targets for the recent World Summit on Sustainable Development that: “Unless we take swift and decisive action, by 2025 as much as two thirds of the world’s population may be living countries that face serious water shortage. We need to improve access. We need to improve the efficiency of water use, for example by getting more ‘crop per drop’ in agriculture which is the largest consumer of water.” ILRI believes that “crop per drop” must include animals feed crops as well as those intended for direct human consumption.
Together, we can make a difference. We hope this workshop will mark new strengthened partnerships that will lead to better natural resource management in Ethiopia. Your excellencies, on behalf of ILRI, I wish to extend a warm welcome to each and every one of you. We thank you all for coming, and we look forward to a rewarding workshop. In the course of the next three days, please do not hesitate to let any member of the ILRI team know if there is anything that we can do to make your time here enriching and enjoyable.
Thank you.